History of
Budd Dairy Company

• 1st Day of Sales: 10 quarts of milk for 60 cents.

Simon Budd (born 1877) moved the business (deemed “S.T. Budd Dairy Company”) to a new plant at 1390 Wesley Ave.

• Production and delivery capacity increased to 60 gallons per day.
• William H. Budd bought out his father’s interest in the company and renamed it “Budd Dairy Company.”

Budd Dairy Company had the only sanitary refrigerated milk wagon in the country.

On December 7, 1916, the Budd Dairy Building and plant opened in the Italian Village on Fourth St. between Fourth Ave. and Detroit.

• Believed to cost about $100,000 at the time, the company was advertised as “America’s finest milk bottling plant” and “buyers and distributors of sweet milk & ice cream.”
• At that point of time, the dairy company had the most modern features of a milk processing plant.
• The building was 70′ wide and 150′ long with two stories and a full basement. It had red brick with black mortar and a terra cotta façade.

• On the second floor, Budd Dairy Company announced the opening of “Budd’s Assembly Hall” … “our assembly hall is popular for clubs, luncheons and private parties.”
• Budd’s Assembly Hall sponsored some of the first “radio dance” events in Columbus with KDKA broadcasts from Pittsburgh.
  Milk came through the site daily by train and truck delivery.
• Milk production increased even more to 900 gallons per day with 20 wagons for delivery.

The building expanded to accommodate more garages for horse drawn wagons and vehicles.

Budd Dairy advertised a new product in the KKK-owned newspaper, The Fiery Cross. Almost immediately, Budd Dairy was boycotted by the African American community and quickly joined by Catholic and Jewish community as well.  The boycott immediately caused a drop in orders of over 600 gallons of milk a day.

Seven months after the boycott had started, the Hamilton Milk Company bought the financially weakened Dairy. This boycott is thought to be one of the earliest successful racially-based economic boycotts in the history of the United States.

With the new ownership in place, customers and sales came back.

• Capacity of the plant was up to 9,000 gallons per day.
• Columbus population grew to 45,000  families in 1925. Budd Dairy Company delivered to 25 percent of this population. This amounted to roughly 11,000 families per week.
• After 31 years in business, the company had never gone a day without providing service or closing for any reason.

Budd Dairy Company services grew with 41 horse drawn wagons, electric wagons and gas trucks.

• The company built a garage/barn that was 100′ wide and 140′ long on the back of the property.
• At this time, a charging plant was added to the structure for electric vehicles.
• Budd became the first company in the United States to use electric vehicles for milk delivery.

Hamilton Milk Company continued to innovate and expand.  They added repair garages to service their delivery vehicles including spots across 4th street (now Seventh Son Brewing Co.)

Borden Dairy Company (known for their iconic cow “Elsie”) buys the Hamilton Milk Company and has an amazing 33 consecutive years processing milk in the building.

The last shipment of milk was processed in the building.